from the and-they're-off dept

We don't see nearly enough good trademark rulings, especially concerning Fair Use, that it's worthwhile in highlighting those that do occur. A nice recent example of this is a court tossing a trademark action started by several horse racing tracks against a gambling gaming company over the latter's use of track names. To get just a bit of background on this, Encore Racing Based Games makes electronic gambling games, including video slots and video poker. You see these types of machines in bars and restaurants wherever this type of gaming has become legal. But they also make a more innovative type of game in which players are presented with historical races and given the option to bet on them in a parimutuel fashion. The results, as best as I can tell, are based on the real-world outcomes of what I assume are obscure enough races that people aren't able to simply look up the results on their smartphones in whatever the allotted time is that they're given. Those results and races, naturally, include the names of the venues in which they were run.

The Court dismissed the suit in its entirety, stating that Encore is “fully within their rights to describe where an event took place in their wagering system without implying the owners of the racetrack are sponsoring the game…[Encore is] protected by the fair use defense when describing where an event took place, even when the location described is most commonly conveyed using a registered trademark…Plaintiffs have failed to allege plausible facts which would justify this matter proceeding beyond this motion to dismiss…Therefore, the Court grants Defendants' motion and dismisses Plaintiffs' claims in their entirety.”

And it's quite easy to see the court's side of things in this case. The use of a trademark primarily to portray historical fact is certainly Fair Use. A race run at Oak Lawn can be described as having been as such. Still, I'm somewhat surprised at the ruling. These electronic games are a form of gambling, after all, and it isn't hard to understand why horse tracks, which are largely struggling nationally, wouldn't want potential bettors to find themselves betting on historical races in this way. Still, the fact that these games are dealing with matters of factual history means Fair Use does indeed come into play.

And, honestly, it's not like what Encore does is necessarily harmful to the tracks in the way they might think.

“We are grateful that the Court once again dismissed a lawsuit that would have severely limited growth in the historic horse racing market,” commented Encore President Jeremy Stein. “Encore is committed to the long term health of the racing and breeding industries, and we are proud that the Encore system and games continue to generate record handle numbers and significant revenue for the horse industry in Kentucky and Wyoming. Monday's ruling will allow us to continue growing while looking to bring historic horse racing revenue to new racing jurisdictions.”

For those of us that love horse racing, anything that brings more people into the fold is a good thing. If people playing these electronic games like them enough to then go out to the actual track, it's a building block for the industry. There's no substitute for going to a nice track, after all, least of all by sitting in front of a glowing machine.

There's one fundamental challenge that has plagued the world of VR from its inception: how do you move about the virtual world? Of course, you can just do so with a joystick or directional pad like any other game, but that's extremely immersion-breaking in most cases, reminding you at every turn of the one thing VR is supposed to make you forget — that you're playing a game. At the other end of the spectrum, some have built multi-directional treadmill rigs that allow you to walk and run in place, but these have their own list of problems, such as the fact that they are very big and very expensive. Plus, it's not always appealing to exert the same amount of physical energy to play a game as you would if you were actually the superhuman action hero you control.

The VRGO offers a new solution. It's a sleek, compact chair that is carefully calibrated to detect your leaning and turning, and translate these movements into game controls. It offers the sort of direct, intuitive control that VR needs without requiring a dedicated room for all your gear or a budget of thousands (it clocks in at around $300 USD, which is hardly eyewatering) and while keeping your hands free. It's wireless and portable, and works not only with PC/Mac but with mobile devices (where a lot of VR experimentation is now happening). Plus, you get to sit down. All told, it may be the single best solution to the problem of movement in VR, especially if price is a factor in that determination.

The Bad

Videos of the VRGO in action tell us it looks good, appears to be responsive and makes users smile — but as with any such device, the ultimate test will be using it yourself to find out how it feels. Does your brain embrace the immersion and forget about the chair, or are you permanently aware that you're rocking back and forth on a plastic egg? And how quickly does this transition happen? Questions like these are why it might be tough to shell out money for the first model, unseen and untried, rather than waiting for some testimonials and hopefully a shot at trying it out somewhere. Still, if the VRGO lives up to its apparent potential, it (and the inevitable imitators, some of which may even improve the design) could become the go-to standard for VR gaming rigs.

The Combinable

While it might actually be fun to try the VRGO out all by itself for certain kinds of normal, non-VR games, obviously the real point of this device is to combine it with, at minimum, a VR display like the Oculus Rift or a smartphone in a Google Cardboard headset. Then there's a rapidly growing world of additional components: Wii-style handheld motion controllers, Kinect-style cameras, tactile feedback gloves, 3D audio systems... And this raises what might be the key challenge for VR as the technological kinks are ironed out, the price comes down, and it becomes mainstream: getting everything to work properly in concert and deliver an overall satisfying experience. In time there will surely be some companies selling comprehensive VR rigs with everything included, but for most gamers (PC gamers especially) their rig will be assembled from multiple different devices. Even assuming there are no strict hardware compatibility issues, there's an interesting question of calibration and optimization — will all these devices feel good together? Will the sensitivity and responsiveness of your VRGO harmonize with that of your motion control camera, or will it create a looming sense of physical dissonance? This isn't just a hardware challenge, but a software one too, and we'll see lots of action on this front as more developers build games with VR in mind as a (or the) primary use case. As the technology for VR comes into its own and the games proliferate, we'll have to move beyond answering each individual question of how to interact with the virtual world, and start focusing on marrying all these aspects into a harmonious, fully-immersive experience.

from the look-and-see dept

For this week's awesome stuff, we're talking all about monitors, projectors and display technology.

Beam

My first thought about Beam — a compact projector that plugs into any light socket and is controlled by your smartphone — was that it's a great idea. My second thought was that it can't possibly be bright enough. But, refreshingly, the video and pictures of the device in action don't make any attempt to deceive on this front: the projections are shown to be rather dim, but still visible, which is the best you could expect from 100 lumens. It's limiting, but it doesn't make it useless, and in the right circumstances for the right applications, Beam could be a very cool solution.

Displio

In a world of rapid device convergence, there's still something very attractive about the idea of dedicated single-purpose units like Displio: a small, configurable wi-fi display that can monitor anything from the weather to an eBay auction. Sure, you could get a smartphone widget or a desktop screensaver to do that job, but would it really feel the same? Some people already do this, at a high cost — I recently visited an office where every conference room was managed by a separate wall-mounted iPad with the sole purpose of scheduling meetings. The Displio looks like it can do that job for $100 a pop.

ScreenStick

This one's not a display, but a display accessory. The rise of mobile gaming has brought with it a revolutionary wave of innovative game design tailored for touch screens, but it's also brought a slew of games that struggle to force traditional control schemes onto these radically different devices. The most common and frustrating of these is the simulated on-screen joystick, which never feels natural and puts a huge cognitive barrier between the player and total immersion. The ScreenStick is not the first attempt to solve that problem by attaching a true joystick right to your touchscreen, but it is one of the nicest designs and best prices I've seen, perhaps capable of becoming a mainstream accessory among the mobile gamers of the world.

from the games-old-and-new dept

For this week's awesome stuff, we're doing away with productivity tools and revolutionary ideas and just looking and some crowdfunding projects for things to be played with.

Mate: The Wall Hanging Chess Board

If I'm being honest, I've long thought chess was a highly overrated game, since it seems to only require actual ingenuity and creativity at the very lowest and very highest levels of play, with years of little more than rote memorization and study in between. Nevertheless, there's no denying that it's a cultural icon, not just as a game but as a physical object and a set of symbols. It has inspired countless pieces of magnificent functional art and craft. It's also fascinating to me for its asynchronous nature: the most interesting chess matches to me aren't rapidfire showdowns with two masters slapping the clock, they are the curious experiments where Kasparov takes on the world, or an avid player engages in ten games-by-mail at once over the course of months and years. The Wall Hanging Chess Board combines both these aspects: a neat piece of home decor that also creates a cool in-home play dynamic, where a long-term game can evolve on the wall as people make their moves whenever they pass by the board.

Tactics: Revolutionize The Foosball Table

Foosball, on the other hand, is a game I've always thought was highly underrated. It may just be because they had a table in my high school, and I've always sucked at ping-pong and pool — but as far as bar and basement games go, I think foosball takes the cake, and has a surprising amount of depth once you get past the "madly spin the handles" stage. Thus, the idea of Tactics, a foosball table that adds a bunch of new twists like specially-shaped feet on certain players to allow more precise aiming, and adjustable team configurations, is an intriguing one to me.

Mineblock: A Small Affordable Minecraft Home Server

I'm almost ashamed to say that I've never actually played Minecraft. I strongly suspect that I would consider it neither over or underrated — it seems to be exactly as brilliant and significant as everyone claims. But I also love the idea of any game where people set up many servers in which they build entirely new worlds, then go and visit each others' creations to interact or compete or just tour around. While a big part of the beauty of this is the fact that these worlds can exist anywhere, all connected by the internet, the idea of tying one to a specific physical space with a local server is also fascinating. The Mineblock, an easy-to-set-up home server for hosting a dedicated Minecraft world, could be a lot of fun, and make this sort of home network gaming more accessible to the less technically inclined. It also looks great.

from the women-are-expensive dept

So, let's get this out of the way: I don't for a moment believe that Ubisoft, as a company, is sexist, prejudiced, or hates women. I really don't. It may well be a tone-deaf, unwieldly company without much concern for a huge percentage of its customer base, but I don't think the fact that it is suddenly excluding female characters from its games was something the company did out of any ill-feelings towards women. After all, Ubisoft has included female characters in many previous games, even games in the very franchises in question, which makes it all the more baffling why it would open itself up to all the backlash by opting out of the fairer sex this go around.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, there were two separate stories in the past week or so about flagship Ubisoft games nixing the planned inclusion of playable female characters in gameplay. The first concerns Assassin Creed: Unity, the next iteration in the franchise, which had planned to include the same female assassins for multiplayer from previous iterations, but then cut them out completely. Strangely, and likely adding to the fervor of the backlash, a second story came out revealing that plans to include female playable characters in multiplayer for Far Cry 4 have also been dropped, and for similar reasons. Regarding the Assassin's Creed story:

Speaking in an interview with Polygon, Unity creative director Alex Amancio said that while they originally planned to include female assassins, the "reality of production" made adding the additional characters too costly. The studio "had to" cut female assassins from the co-op mode, Amancio explained in response to a question from Polygon's Ben Kuchera, because keeping them in would have doubled the cost of pretty much everything: "it's double the animations, double the voices, all that stuff, double the visual assets—especially because we have customizable assassins."

And Far Cry 4:

Speaking in an interview with Polygon, Alex Hutchinson, the game's director, said that the developers were "inches away" from allowing players to choose between a man or woman as a co-op buddy in the upcoming shooter's multiplayer. What stopped them? Hutchinson said it was "purely a workload issue." The team didn't have a "female reader for the character" at its disposal, nor did it have "all the animations in place."

The reaction from gamers in general has been decidedly negative. What's worse, there is obviously no positive support for this either. If you're reacting to this news at all, you're almost certainly either very angry or you don't care one way or the other. Now, let's reiterate this to be very clear again: I'm not accusing Ubisoft of hating women, or of refusing to include female characters on any kind of ideological grounds. But that doesn't make the decision and the reasons provided any less stupid. Even other members of the game-developing industry are calling bullshit.

In my educated opinion, I would estimate this to be a day or two's work. Not a replacement of 8000 animations. - Jonathan Cooper, Naughty Dog and former Ubisoft animator

"We don't really care to put the effort in to make a woman assassin" #realrealityofgamedevelopment - Manveer Heir, Bioware

Is this some kind of major industry crisis? No, probably not, but as gaming develops as a major entertainment medium for a diversifying demographic base, companies that refuse to listen to the backlash on this kind of thing are going to find themselves in trouble. Something like this in particular really should have been thought through more carefully, even though it's not clear much thought was put into this at all. This isn't the 90's any longer and the average gamer looks far different than the stereotype. We're talking about a 31 year old, likely educated to some degree, person who is every bit as likely to be female as male. Seriously, 48% of gamers are women. The boys club's door has been beaten down by women and game developers had better start recognizing that or risk the consequences, because this was just refusing to put in the time to include some female multiplayer characters and the backlash got this big. Imagine what an even deeper slight to the woman gamer will cause.

from the sorry-i-wasn't-paying-attention dept

You may recall the concern some have raised over Smart TVs, those internet connected glowing boxes with cameras ripe for exploits that would allow hackers to watch you watch TV. Supposedly less nefarious were concerns over technology that would allow those same Smart TVs to recognize when you had left the room or were looking away, subsequently dimming the screen to conserve energy. Whether or not either is a concern rising to the levels of epidemic privacy invasion, one thing that is clear is that the general public is a bit dubious about being monitored within their own living rooms.

The patent, snappily titled "Awards and achievements across TV ecosystem", describes camera sensors monitoring the eye movements and heartbeats of TV viewers. Which means a console will know if you're in the room when an ad break is on, or if you've popped out to make tea. It'll also be able to tell whether you're actually watching the ad or if you're engrossed in the latest issue of Heat magazine. And don't even think about gaming the system by watching telly with the lights off: the XBox would be able to monitor you even in the dark.

Every move you make, every breath you take, the Xbox would be watching you – but also rewarding you. The patent suggests that sitting through commercial breaks would rack you up points to buy both virtual and physical awards. The thinking behind this being that people today need to be bribed in order to sit still and watch a commercial. As the patent application explains: "With the proliferation of digital video recording devices, advertisers are finding it increasingly difficult to introduce their advertisements to viewers."

While the above can be slightly misleading in that this is a patent application, not a granted patent, the response to it is the same. Fun, right? Here's the problem. I am aware that, at some level, everything about video games is reward-based. The obvious Xbox achievements are in place and people ostensibly seek them out, though I have yet to attain any modicum of understanding as to why people do this. Less obvious is the concept of gaming in general. Get to the next level. See that next cut-scene. Advance the plot. Unlock the new weapon, the new armor, or the new ability to shoot a bad guy directly in the balls. These are things that are important to gamers. It might therefore seem natural to build a rewards-based system for advertising as well within this audience.

Except advertisements are different, aren't they? If we're skipping ads, it's because they're an annoyance. Whereas stopping the bad guy, winning the World Series, or uncovering a mystery are all integral to the playing of whatever game we're enjoying, advertisements are, by definition, a break from what we're actually interested in doing. In fact, the label of "achievement" itself relating to watching advertising reeks of a gross misnomer. Granted, being able to stomach a minute's worth of Miss Cleo advertising may seem like a challenge, but it isn't an achievement in the same way.

More importantly, as the article notes, getting people to watch ads isn't a problem solved by some kind of Pavlovian reward system. It's solved by having creative, interesting, and entertaining ads.

The proliferation of digital video recording devices is something of a red herring when it comes to ad-viewing. After all, people aren't forced to skip the ads when they watch a time-shifted show; rather, they're free to watch them over and over again if they like. Just, err, most people don't like. Research conducted by Deloitte in 2010 found that 90% of TV viewers always skip through the adverts on their DVR. But the answer to stopping this behaviour doesn't lie in sophisticated motion-detecting technology, it lies in making ads that people actually want to watch. The biggest threat to advertising isn't technology like Sky+; the biggest threat to advertising is bad advertising.

Because advertising is content and content is advertising. And these invalidating arguments are made without even bothering to touch upon the public's reaction to being watched through the all-seeing eye in Microsoft's device. In a world where authors like Rand and Orwell are well-read, I expect a line to be drawn between cameras in the public square and cameras within our own walls. That this would be done to solve a problem better solved through smarter means is a fact I hope won't be lost on anyone.

from the no-more-defaming-gaming dept

Due to recent events and blame-shifting attempts by certain lobbying groups, video games are once again in the crosshairs here in America. It's unclear to me as of yet whether or not this will amount to a heavy dose of grandstanding noise and then die off, or if any of the crackpot proposals surrounding games will actually be enacted. The studies linking gaming with all manner of negative impacts are, at best, all over the place. Proponents of legislation will often claim that since there is no evidence that games don't harm youths, a proactive approach is the sensible one. Those on my side of the debate, i.e. people that prefer logic to grandstanding, prefer to suggest that it is incumbent upon those affirming a stance to provide evidence for it, as opposed to asking others to disprove a link that likely doesn't exist. In any case, whether you think legislation against games is warranted or not, one needs only to look to China's mainland to see what effect such legislation might have.

That's because China banned console gaming a decade ago. Due to a fear of harming the physical and mental growth of Chinese children, the government banned the manufacture, sale or import of all gaming consoles. The results are about what you'd expect, which is to say that there are all kinds of gaming consoles in the Chinese market, except they're either smuggled in or they're simply called something else in marketing material to get around the ban.

Beijing Eedoo successfully launched a multimedia entertainment console in the mainland market in April last year. But the company has changed the product name several times in order to avoid sensitive issues.

Jack Luo, chief executive officer of Beijing Eedoo, insisted his company is selling a "sports and entertainment machine", rather than a game console, to Chinese families.

That's certainly one laughably transparent way to do it, I suppose. The other is to sell pirated games along with smuggled systems, which a select number of Chinese businesses do. With so little competition, the margins are extreme. They love the ban on consoles. Unfortunately for those engaged in selling these black market consoles, the Chinese government appears to be waking up to the uselessness of their law and is said to be considering lifting the ban entirely.

Rumors have circulated in the Chinese media that some international companies have already sensed the government's changing attitude. They hope to figure out the Chinese authorities' intentions so they can make a rapid response, analysts said.

Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), a subsidiary responsible for Sony's PlayStation business, set up a branch in South China's Guangdong province in June last year. The Guangdong branch will conduct training and research and development work for Sony.

Microsoft introduced its Kinect, a controller-free game console, to the Chinese mainland in October last year. However, Zhang Yaqin, chairman of Microsoft Corp's Asia-Pacific Research and Development Group, said Kinect is not used for games in China but for other purposes, such as medical treatment and education.

This, of course, would be a boon to console-makers around the world, providing them a massive market and freeing them from pretending their console devices are chiefly a medical or educational device. More importantly, there's a lesson here for Americans. Laws limiting speech and entertainment that go against the wishes of the public not only don't work, they encourage illegal profiteering of those same laws. If a totalitarian regime like China can figure this out, I'd like to think our grandstanding legislators can as well.

from the youth-vote? dept

The Republican Party often has trouble attracting younger voters. Perhaps they should try not attacking one of the most popular pastimes for those voters. According to an entertaining report at Ars Technica, the Maine Republican Party has gone after a Democratic candidate for State Senate, Colleen Lachowicz, by attacking the fact that she played World of Warcraft, pulling a bunch of forum quotes she made a few years ago, and taking them out of context -- such as her statement that "I love poisoning and stabbing. It is fun."

Tim Lee's writeup at Ars hits on exactly the right response:

Lachowicz uses salty language in some of the comments, but someone needs to sit the Maine GOP down and explain the difference between fantasy and reality. Every day, millions of people engage in simulated video game violence without committing any real-world violence. By suggesting a World of Warcraft hobby should disqualify someone for office—and implying that voters are too dumb to tell the difference between virtual and real violence—the party is only embarrassing itself.

Later, a spokesman tried to defend the flier, arguing that it raised questions about her work ethic. How? Well, state GOP spokesperson David Sorenson used "the number of hours most World of Warcraft gamers spend playing the game (22.7 per week, on average) and the number it must have taken her to reach such a high level" as some sort of proof that her work ethic is problematic. First of all, using the average amount of time someone plays WoW is meaningless in looking at how much any individual plays. Also, isn't achieving a high level a sign of a strong work ethic?

Once again, Lee's response is perfect:

It's worth noting that the average American watches more than 30 hours of television per week. Many other Americans spend their evenings and weekends at the golf course. Yet it's hard to imagine anyone suggesting that devoting 22 hours per week to those hobbies made a candidate too lazy to hold elected office.

I realize it's election season, and with that comes really, really dumb campaign ideas from nearly every political party and/or candidate, but it's difficult to see how this particular strategy is good for anyone -- especially if you want younger people to vote for you. The younger generation tends to respect and look up to gamer politicians. Attacking them for doing something that millions of people enjoy just doesn't seem particularly smart.

from the that-will-teach-them dept

A ways back I noted a rather nice story about Israeli and Iranian citizens using the internet and social media to reach out and express solidarity with one another, despite their governments' differences. I found it rather encouraging that political rhetoric from both sides could be dismissed in favor of a humanist approach, no matter the vulgar generalizations each side might hear about the other. If you weren't already aware, despite the rivalry of the two nations, United States citizens and Iranians have had ways to interact over the internet as well, such as through online gaming platforms like World Of Warcraft. That is, they were able to do so, until the US government made more noise recently about the sanctions in Iran and Blizzard finally blocked Iranian users.

Last week, a user claiming to be from Iran posted on an official World of Warcraft forum to report that the game was inaccessible. A Blizzard employee responded to the thread on Saturday, writing that "United States trade restrictions and economic sanction laws prohibit Blizzard from doing business with residents of certain nations, including Iran."

"This week, Blizzard tightened up its procedures to ensure compliance with these laws, and players connecting from the affected nations are restricted from access to Blizzard games and services," the employee said.

In a fun little addendum, the Blizzard employee also mentioned that the company is unable to refund subscriptions as well.

You can have your rials back when you pry them from our cold dead fingers...Image source. CC BY 2.0

Now, perhaps it's just me, but color me confused as to how sanctions against Iran need to be broad enough that online gaming is caught in the mix. Perhaps more importantly, as bothparties like to make a lot of noise about "internet freedom" and its application to broadening freedom and Democracy in nations that enjoy little of both, does this result from our sanctions jive with how our State Department seems to want to encourage governments around the world to allow open communication through the internet and social media? While I understand the occasional need to punish a bad government through trade sanctions, this particular result doesn't seem to do that at all. Instead, it only cuts Iranians off from those that could tell them how great freedom is.

from the that's-how-its-done dept

If I had to choose one company as the antithesis to Ubisoft's boneheaded take on business, I would probably choose Stardock. Stardock is one of those companies that continues to do everything right while many other companies in the video game industry insist it is wrong. So, it really comes as no surprise that Stardock producer Jon Shafer wrote that respecting your fans should be one of the most important aspects of doing business. He makes four very good points in this essay that I think all entertainment companies can learn from.

First up, Jon speaks about the importance of demos to a project's success:

When you don't put out a demo, some people will start asking questions… is it because the game isn't any good and the developer is afraid people will find out? Did they run out of time and the lack of a demo is a sign that the game is sloppy and unfinished? You don't want players asking those questions -- you want them trying out your awesome game and telling everyone they know about it.

We have spoken numerous times about the importance of fans being able to sample entertainment before they buy. We have seen study after study that shows that those who have the ability to try things out before dropping money for it, are much more likely to not only buy, but buy more. Why would you deny your fans the ability to try out your game, music, book or movie? A nice demo can go a long way.

Next up, Jon shares some words about interacting with fans:

As developers working on the oft-mundane, daily tasks required in making a piece of software, we often lose sight of the fact that there are also many players who love our work. For them the opportunity to talk with someone that worked on their favorite game is incredibly exciting (something we are occasionally reminded of when we get to meet the creators of our favorite games!).

Ah. The old adage of connecting with fans. What this does is make sure that not only that the fans like your work, but that they also like you. We know that it is far easier for customers to buy something from a company or a person they actually like. The best way to gain that affection is to put yourself out there and communicate with your fans.

Then, Jon speaks about giving fans ownership:

Players like having ownership. It's one of the reasons why they're playing games (an active form of entertainment) rather than experiencing a self-contained work in another medium. The absolute best way to hand over the keys to your game is to make it moddable. Many of the most beloved and long-lasting games of all time are also highly moddable, and their communities live on long after the last official update. Why? Because the players took ownership and had a vested interest in the longevity and overall success of the game. This sort of relationship between player and game is only possible when the players have the power to reshape the game to their liking.

While modding itself is unique to gaming, the idea behind it is as old as recorded media. The idea behind modding is pretty close to that of remixing in other media. This desire to reshape and make our own the entertainment we consume is something that should be embraced by successful creators. Doing so not only gains you more fans, but also ensures that your work will live on in the hearts and minds of those who enjoy it.

Finally, Jon speaks on piracy:

Ah, the elephant in the room. I’ll just put it this way: if the CIA can get hacked, you’re not going to be able to prevent your game from being cracked. Sorry. You can't stop piracy. Focus on building up a fanbase and higher sales through goodwill instead of trying to bend the internet to your will. If you're spending a ton of effort trying to "win the war" on piracy, then you're wasting resources you could have been used to make better games. The reason why studios like Blizzard and Valve are so successful and beloved is because they focus on delivering the best games possible, time and money be damned. Don't make enemies of paying customers by making them jump through hoops. As history shows us, in most wars there are no winners -- only losers.

We are already well aware of Stardock's official position on piracy. It would rather maximize sales than waste resources fighting a losing battle. This is something that many people within the entertainment industry need to learn. Piracy is a symptom of far larger problems. By wasting time and money fighting it, you are shifting resources away from those areas that truly matter to the end consumer.

While these four points are nothing new to many of us here, they are things that too many still have not learned or refuse to recognize. It is time to stop the war on fans and begin to embrace them and their culture. Times are changing. People do not consume entertainment in the same ways they did ten years ago. Fans know what they like and know who provides it. Those who refuse to adapt are going to be left behind.